36.3450, Calls: Bilingual Language Processing: Bridging Human and Artificial Cognition (France)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-36-3450. Wed Nov 12 2025. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 36.3450, Calls: Bilingual Language Processing: Bridging Human and Artificial Cognition (France)

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Date: 10-Nov-2025
From: Tamara Serrano Romero [tamara.serrano at uab.cat]
Subject: Bilingual Language Processing: Bridging Human and Artificial Cognition


Full Title: Bilingual Language Processing: Bridging Human and
Artificial Cognition
Short Title: BiLaP 2026

Date: 23-Apr-2026 - 24-Apr-2026
Location: Bayonne, France
Web Site:
https://clt.uab.cat/activitats_clt/workshop-bilingual-language-processing-bridging-human-and-artificial-cognition-bilap-2026/

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Science;
Computational Linguistics; Neurolinguistics; Psycholinguistics

Call Deadline: 09-Jan-2026

Background:
The study of how the human brain manages and uses multiple languages
has been a central topic in cognition, psychology, and
psycholinguistics for decades. Different aspects of how bilinguals
activate and control their different languages, which cognitive skills
are enhanced during this mental juggling, and what are the limits to
the processes of language switching and mixing are a few of the topics
that have been at the forefront of such research (Blanco-Elorrieta &
Pylkkänen 2017, Parafita Couto et al. 2021). With the recent
advancements of Large Language Models (LLMs), there has been a renewed
interest in these processes and their possibly different
manifestations in humans vs. models. In BiLaP 2026, we underscore the
need to study bilingual language processing through testing diverse
languages but also closely related ones in order to understand whether
there are language family proxies in Artificial Intelligence (e.g.,
transfer from a bigger language to all smaller languages within a
language family/branch).
Some of the guiding questions of this workshop are:
 - What are the limits of code-switching in humans?
 - What are the limits of code-switching in LLMs?
 - Are there language-specific neurons or ‘storage rooms’ in LLMs such
that languages are kept separately (Cao et al. 2024, Tang et al.
2024)?
 - How does this picture from models compare to the bilingual human
brain?
 - How do bilingual humans differ from bilingual LLMs when it comes to
their performance in language processing tasks?
 - How do LLMs perform linguistically in languages other than English?
 - Do they have a default language for thought (Etxaniz et al. 2024)?
These are some of the topics that will be covered in BiLaP. Research
on regional, non-standard, and/or minority languages pertaining to
either human cognition or artificial language processing is especially
welcome.
How to Participate:
A 2-page abstract (including references, tables, and figures) should
be submitted via EasyChair.
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bilap2026. If you have any
problems submitting the abstract, please contact
tamara.serrano at uab.cat.
Important Dates:
Deadline for submission: 9 January 2026
Notification: 23 January 2026
Invited Speakers:
Esti Blanco-Elorrieta
Jon Andoni Duñabeitia
M. Carmen Parafita-Couto
Early Career Invited Speakers:
Julen Etxaniz
Arrate Isasi-Isasmendi
Camilla Masullo
Organizing Committee:
Urtzi Etxeberria, CNRS-IKER
Evelina Leivada, UAB/ICREA
Tamara Serrano, UAB
Nina van der Linde, UAB
Paolo Morosi, UAB
Natalia Moskvina, UAB
Raquel Montero, UAB
Nikoleta Pantelidou, UAB
Guillermo Fontanals, UAB
References
Blanco-Elorrieta, E. & Pylkkänen, L. (2017). Bilingual language
switching in the lab vs. in the wild: The spatio-temporal dynamics of
adaptive language control. The Journal of Neuroscience, 37, 9022–9036.
Cao, P. et al. (2024). One mind, many tongues: A deep dive into
language-agnostic knowledge neurons in Large Language Models.
arXiv:2411.1740.
Etxaniz, J. et al. (2024). Do multilingual Language Models think
better in English? Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the
Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers).
Parafita Couto, M. C., Romeli, M. G. & Bellamy, K. (2021).
Code-switching at the interface between language, culture, and
cognition, Lapurdum: Basque Studies Review.
Tang, T. et al. (2024). Language-specific neurons: The key to
multilingual capabilities in Large Language Models. Proceedings of the
62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics
(Volume 1: Long Papers). Association for Computational Linguistics.



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